Bardyn CE, Wawer L, Altland A, Fleischhauer M, Diehl S (2018)
Publication Type: Journal article
Publication year: 2018
Book Volume: 8
Article Number: 011035
Journal Issue: 1
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevX.8.011035
The mixedness of a quantum state is usually seen as an adversary to topological quantization of observables. For example, exact quantization of the charge transported in a so-called Thouless adiabatic pump is lifted at any finite temperature in symmetry-protected topological insulators. Here, we show that certain directly observable many-body correlators preserve the integrity of topological invariants for mixed Gaussian quantum states in one dimension. Our approach relies on the expectation value of the many-body momentum-translation operator and leads to a physical observable - the "ensemble geometric phase" (EGP) - which represents a bona fide geometric phase for mixed quantum states, in the thermodynamic limit. In cyclic protocols, the EGP provides a topologically quantized observable that detects encircled spectral singularities ("purity-gap" closing points) of density matrices. While we identify the many-body nature of the EGP as a key ingredient, we propose a conceptually simple, interferometric setup to directly measure the latter in experiments with mesoscopic ensembles of ultracold atoms.
APA:
Bardyn, C.-E., Wawer, L., Altland, A., Fleischhauer, M., & Diehl, S. (2018). Probing the Topology of Density Matrices. Physical Review X, 8(1). https://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.8.011035
MLA:
Bardyn, Charles-Edouard, et al. "Probing the Topology of Density Matrices." Physical Review X 8.1 (2018).
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